Greetings, Pilgrim, and as always, thank you for your forbearance in having a Catholic on your forum.

I guess the answer to your question would depend on how far back we go in history. Before the invention of the printing press, the Bible was copied by monks with an imprimatur from the bishop. The work was tedious, costly, and took decades to accomplish. Sheep were slaughtered by the thousands to make the parchment to write on. As you may know, each town had one church, usually in the center of town and that church had one Bible, a treasure that belonged to everyone in that dioces. If there were any private ownership of a Bible, as you can imagine, the owner would have to be very wealthy indeed.

While average people didn't own Bibles, it was customary to own single pages of the Holy Scripture; perhaps a Psalm, or a part of the gospels, or part of an epistle. People traded these with each other and so ordinary people found a way to have access to much of the Holy Scriptures.

With the invention of the printing press, the availability of the Bible would improve but slowly. It was still a costly endeavor to make a full Bible. To answer your question, a Bible was a precious resource and that's why there were laws protecting it and ensuring that it wouldn't be subject to corruption or error. It took an organization, in particular, the Church, to do so. We have much to be grateful for. Because of the due diligence of faithful monks in the Catholic Church, we have in our possession today a Bible we can trust has been unaltered since the original canon was officiated in the Councils of Rome and Hippo in 393 A.D. It's a frivolous thing to second guess history, especially when that thing in question is a stunning success.

In Christ's most Sacred Heart.

Liberalism -- Ideas so good, they have to be mandated.